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Iris scan by Sam Altman, Validation of humanity world Tinder users around the world can now place a digital badge on their profiles to signal to potential suitors that they are real humans, provided they have already gazed at one of the startups, the project announced at an event in San Francisco on Friday. Bright white orbs I allowed their eyes to be examined. This announcement comes on the heels of a Tinder verification pilot project that World previously conducted in Japan.
Tinder’s global expansion is one of the biggest tests yet for the world, and Company bet That ordinary consumers would be willing to sign up for biometric verification services to use Internet applications. Founded in 2019 by Altman and Alex Plania, the global project is designed for a future in which the Internet is overrun by highly capable AI agents making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to know who a human really is. As companies like OpenAI — where Altman is CEO — and Anthropic push AI agents into the mainstream, the problem the world was built to solve seems increasingly urgent.
But the world has struggled to achieve mainstream adoption, and has faced resistance from governments around the world that have investigated the company over suspected violations of data protection laws. The company says 18 million people have now been verified using the orb, compared to 12 million last year.
In addition to Tinder’s global expansion, Tools for Humanity, the company behind World, announced a number of other consumer and enterprise partnerships on Friday at its “Lift Off” event in San Francisco. The startup says Tinder users who verify using their Global ID will get five free “boosts,” a typically paid feature that increases the number of users viewing a profile by up to ten times for 30 minutes. Video conferencing platform Zoom also says that users can now ask other participants to verify their identity with World before joining the call. Docusign, a contract signing software, will allow users to request universal identity verification technology.
Tiago Sada, chief product officer at Tools for Humanity, tells WIRED that the company sees major platform partnerships as key to helping World become a major identity verification technology. Al-Sada said he’s particularly interested in working with social media companies in the future, and was encouraged when he saw Reddit taking off Test world As a solution to help users distinguish between bots and real people.
World is also launching a tool called Concert Kit, which lets artists book concert tickets for verified people, an offering aimed squarely at the problem of bot-driven scalping that critics say has plagued sites like TicketMaster. The world will experience this feature on Bruno Mars’ upcoming world tour featuring Anderson .Paak, who is set to play a verified humans-only show under his alias DJ Pee .Wee in San Francisco on Friday night.
No new hardware announcements or updates were made at Friday’s event. The world first launched the Orb iris-scanning device in 2023, along with a mobile app containing “mini-apps” for various verification and blockchain-related software. After someone scans their eyeball with one of the world orbs, the startup creates a unique encryption key for each person — their world ID. This creates a private, decentralized way to verify people online, without requiring them to upload their government ID online.
The project was initially called Worldcoin, and in the early days the startup offered people free cryptocurrency for scanning their iris. The world still offers a cryptocurrency token and cryptocurrency wallet, but it dropped the “coin” from its name in 2024, and has since shifted its focus to identity verification in the age of artificial intelligence. Jess Montegano, a spokesperson for Tools for Humanity, says the company still offers cryptocurrencies as an incentive when new users sign up, but has also expanded its offerings to include Netflix and Apple TV subscription trials.